Ambulance Girl: How I Saved Myself By Becoming an EMT-Fast Shipping

Description

The basis for the movie starring Kathy Bates, Ambulance Girl is an inspiringstory by a woman who found,somewhat late in life, that “in helping others I learnedto helpmyself.”

Jane Stern was a walking encyclopedia of panic attacks, depression,and hypochondria. Her marriage of more than thirty years was suffering, and she wasvirtually immobilized by fear and anxiety. As the daughter of parents who both diedbefore she was thirty, Stern was terrified of illness and death, and despite thefact that her acclaimed career as a food and travel writer required her to spenda great deal of time on airplanes, she suffered from a persistent fear of flyingand severe claustrophobia. Yet, this fifty-two-year-old writer decided to become an emergency medicaltechnician.

Stern tells her storywith great humor and poignancy, creating a wonderful portrait of a middle-aged, WoodyAllen–ish woman who was “deeply and neurotically terrified of sick and dead people,”but who went out into the world to save other people’s lives as a way of saving herown. Her story begins with the boot camp of EMT training: 140 hours at the handsof a dour ex-marine who took delight in presenting a veritable parade of amputations,hideous deformities, and gross disasters. Jane—overweight and badly out of shape—hadto surmount physical challenges like carrying a 250-pound man seated in a chair downa dark flight of stairs. After class she did rounds in the emergency room of a localhospital.

Each call Stern describes is a vignetteof human nature, often with a life in the balance. From an AIDS hospice to town drunks,yuppie wife beaters to psychopaths, Jane comes to see the true nature and underlyingmysteries of a town she had called home for twenty years. Throughout the book wefollow her as she gets her sea legs, bonds with the firefighterswho become her colleagues, and eventually, comes to be known as Ambulance Girl.